Fideres Partners LLP, a leading independent economic consulting firm specializing in expert economic analysis for complex litigation, today announced its role in supporting Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP in the filing of a groundbreaking antitrust class action challenging alleged manipulation of the London Gold Fix benchmark. The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, represents the first major legal challenge to the century-old gold price-setting mechanism.
Fideres’s early-stage economic analysis proved instrumental in identifying anomalous pricing patterns around the Gold Fix windows, providing the foundational evidence that enabled Quinn Emanuel to construct their compelling case against major international banks. The firm’s sophisticated market analysis revealed suspicious price movements that suggested coordinated manipulation of the benchmark used to set gold prices globally.
Alberto Thomas, Founding Partner of Fideres, stated: «Our team’s detailed analysis of gold market data uncovered significant anomalous pricing patterns occurring systematically around the London Gold Fix windows. These statistical irregularities provided compelling evidence of potential market manipulation that formed the cornerstone of Quinn Emanuel’s litigation strategy.»
The litigation alleges that defendant banks, including major international financial institutions, conspired to manipulate the London PM Gold Fix—a daily benchmark-setting process that determines gold prices for physical gold transactions and gold-based financial instruments worldwide. Fideres’s preliminary economic work involved extensive analysis of high-frequency trading data, price movements, and market behavior during the critical fixing windows.
«This case demonstrates how rigorous statistical analysis can expose hidden market manipulation,» said Steffen Hennig, Co-Founder of Fideres. «Our early identification of anomalous pricing patterns around the fixing times provided Quinn Emanuel with the economic foundation necessary to challenge what appeared to be systematic manipulation of one of the world’s most important commodity benchmarks.»
The Gold Fix litigation represents a significant expansion of benchmark manipulation cases following similar successful challenges to LIBOR and other financial benchmarks. Fideres’s work focused on the technical aspects of price discovery during the fixing process, analyzing whether observed price movements were consistent with natural market forces or suggested coordinated intervention by the defendant banks.
Quinn Emanuel’s complaint, supported by Fideres’s economic analysis, alleges that the manipulation harmed investors and traders who bought or sold gold-based financial instruments, physical gold, and gold derivatives during the alleged conspiracy period from 2004 to 2013. The case seeks damages for a proposed class of market participants who were allegedly injured by artificial pricing.
The London Gold Fix, which has operated since 1919, involves a private daily telephone conference among participating banks to set benchmark gold prices. Fideres’s analysis suggests that this process may have been compromised by coordinated efforts to influence prices for the banks’ trading advantage.